RSS International Conference 2023
Harrogate, UK
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Visualisations are found everywhere.
They are the key medium for transporting a message.
Some are better than others.
There are largely no standards.
Variables: Lat/lon of army position, direction, army size, geography, temperature.
C Minard (1869): The successive losses in men of the French Army in the Russian campaign 1812-1813. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Gauge the sizes, determine the largest piece
The number of pixels per pie depends on its position
Sorting the bars by height is easy
… and arguably even easier with horizontal layout
A single pixel carries the same information as a large bar
Faint gridlines help reading off values precisely
There are options in designing a visualisation!
Data visualisations must serve a purpose.
Frequent aim: comparison.
Ask yourself:
Note the defaults: the boxplot function in R has 27 of them.
Line types: map style elements to order
If data points overlay (which they generally do)
If data points overlay perfectly (example: integer data)
Shades of gray
Edward Tufte (2001), p. 154
Should be intuitive:
Ideal case: Single look at the legend to memorize the mapping
Not intuitive: triangles, circles, squares -> repeated looks
(unless the order - number of vertices - carries a meaning)
| Name | Age | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Alex | 55 | 123.45 |
| Sandy | 33 | 77.07 |
| Name | Alex | Sandy |
|---|---|---|
| Age | 55 | 33 |
| Weight | 123.45 | 77.07 |
Generally helpful:
| Name | Age | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Alex | 55 | 123.45 |
| Sandy | 33 | 77.07 |
| Name | Alex | Sandy |
|---|---|---|
| Age | 55.00 | 33.00 |
| Weight | 123.45 | 77.07 |
| Variable | Mean (%CV) |
|---|---|
| Age | 55 (9) |
| Weight | 88 (25) |
| Variable | Mean | %CV |
|---|---|---|
| Age | 55 | 9 |
| Weight | 88 | 25 |
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Alt text (AKA alternative text) is text that describes the visual aspects and purpose of an image – including charts.
Though alt text has various uses, its primary purpose is to aid visually impaired users in interpreting images when the alt text is read aloud by screen readers.
Source: medium.com/nightingale/writing-alt-text-for-data-visualization (Amy Cesal)
Following data visualisation guidelines
Consistent font and colour choices
Easy to implement!
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Colour palettes
Base R helper functions
{ggplot2} helper functions
Installing from GitHub:
Load package:
Quarto is an open-source scientific and technical publishing system that allows you to combine text, images, code, plots, and tables in a fully-reproducible document. Quarto has support for multiple languages including R, Python, Julia, and Observable. It works for a range of output formats such as PDFs, HTML documents, websites, presentations,…
The source code for the guide is stored on GitHub.
If you want to contribute to the guide, the easiest way is via a GitHub pull request.
GitHub link: github.com/royal-statistical-society/datavisguide
Contributor guide: royal-statistical-society.github.io/datavisguide/howto.html#how-to-contribute-to-this-guide
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Ask us!
Conference session: GitHub: Version control for research, teaching and industry, Thu 7th @ 11:40
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Hovering shows available tickets and prices.
Select Block A3. Note the positioning of pitch and block.
Select your seat.
The map is upside down now (pitch at bottom)!
Seats available are marked red!
Messages:
Do not confuse the users!
Use consistent elements (axes, orientations)
Use intuitive elements (here: colors)
No of blood samples vs time on conc.-time curve.